As a repetiteur, he has staged works at American Ballet Theater, Bolshoi Ballet, Boston Ballet, Birmingham Royal Ballet and Corella Ballet Castilla y Leon, among others. In 2008, Roberts was the assistant choreographer for Ms. Tharp’s “Rabbit and Rogue” at American Ballet Theater. Mr. Roberts was the ballet’s guest ballet master for the 2012-13 season, and has taught at the ballet’s Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School and the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.

Tamara Rojo has looked a little shaky in some of her performances since taking on the daunting dual role of director and principal dancer at English National Ballet, but she’s back on form and she proves it in a different daunting dual role, as Odette/Odile in this in-the-round production of Swan Lake.

Golding, a guest artist from Dutch National Ballet, is a tall dancer with clean, expansive technique. He powers across the huge stage, his dancing eating up space. His face isn’t naturally expressive, but he drives himself into the action of the ballet.

I've attended this 16-year-old production again and again, faithfully searching every time to find what others effusively admire in it. I still can’t find it. It remains to me a paradox that Deane, who created a cherishable theatre staging of Swan Lake at the same time he was conceiving this bloated arena version, could have jugggled two sides of his imagination so opposite, the believing theatre director and the bombastic sergeant-major.

On opening night, the problem also lay with the two principals. Matthew Golding, guesting from Dutch National Ballet, has a long arabesque line, an elegantly expansive jump and impeccable arms, but his dancing lacks spontaneous expression, and he is clearly no actor. Tamara Rojo's Odette was oddly unmoving, too, the lyricism and beauty of her dancing too evidently calculated. It was only in the couple's bravura act three that the chemistry between them came alive. Spinning and whirring through astoundingly multiple, embellished turns, they seemed suddenly together, in the moment. In the audience's accompanying roars of excitement, real emotion beat through the Albert Hall for the first time.

On the Charlie Rose show, John Galliano blames drunken anti-Semitic rant on Nureyev.

Also, around the time of that event, I was heavily researching for my John Galliano menswear collection, which was inspired by the life of Rudolph Nureyev, who was an anti-Semite. When I research, I really go into it. Where does she live? Does she read by candlelight or gaslight, the color of her hair dye, the scent on her breath — is it gin? — the powder of her makeup; it helps me to create. It helps me to create a character... I'm living it, I'm breathing it. I'm not making excuses at all, but this is the work I've done since that event, to try and find out what happened.

A review of the Bolshoi Ballet in 'The Bright Stream' by Alison Cotes for Crikey.

Add scenery such as was never seen in any harvest festival, the prettiest and simplest little 1930s frocks that the real collective workers would have longed to wear, and the eminently danceable music of Shostakovich, and you have a ballet as satisfying as any I’ve personally seen — better even than the folk ballets I saw at the Bolshoi Theatre on my one-off trip to Moscow many years ago. The modern (2003) choreographer by the Bolshoi’s former director, Alexei Ratmansky, pushes the dancers to their limits but shows off all their talents, and is astonishingly beautiful in its own right.

Russian authorities lauch an investigation into embezzlement of state funds in relation to the renovation of the Bolshoi Theater.

Interior Ministry officials said Thursday a contractor, PO Teplotekhnik, received the money for work on the theater's electrical system despite not fulfilling its contract, Russian news agencies reported. The company couldn't immediately be reached for comment.

An interview with Irina Kolpakova by Yona Zeldis McDonough in The Paris Review. (Thanks to sandik for sending in the link!)

I wanted to ask you about Vaganova because not too many people in this country know about her contribution to classical ballet. What can you say about her teaching method? What was distinctive or different or important?

Vaganova told us to use all parts of our body together at the same time. Not only this movement for the leg, this movement for the arms, this movement you’re supposed to learn how to use for your head, neck. No, all together, all the time. And she was huge—in Paris they called her the Queen of the Variations. She was … amazing. And she was really smart. She combined French method with Danish. I think that’s unique. Her method was unique.